Words and photographs from a Buttershug

Myst 3: Exile – for Snow Leopard

Reposted from 2010:

I can’t begin to express my fondness for the Myst games. It began some time in the mid-late 90s and continued for almost a decade. I think I stopped playing after Myst IV: Revelation when they began to switch from live video to CGI people. A computer-generated Atrus just felt so wrong.

After explaining the magic of the Myst games to one of the kids recently, I suddenly had the overwhelming desire to play it again. In comes the magic of Amazon.com but to my dismay, my order arrived with a DVD version instead of CD-ROM.

For those familiar with the DVD version, it’s not exactly compatible out of the box with Mac OS X. In fact, the DVD doesn’t even install. And once it’s on your hard drive, you’re still very likely to get the below m3t error.

m3t error: $M3Data\TEXT\ENGLISH.m3t

I searched page after page for any fix, any hack, any help at all in getting that game to work. I tried everything everyone suggested until finally I seemed to get the magic formula that brought up the game screen and let me into the Myst worlds again. I can’t guarantee this will completely fix everything for anyone else trying to install, but I had to at least post the things that allowed me to replay my favorite computer game of all time.

My method was as follows:

1. Create a folder in Applications called Myst 3

2. Copy the contents of the Myst III English folder from the DVD into your new Myst 3 folder

5. Create a folder inside the Myst 3 folder called Exile DVD and drop the data folder into it

6. Download the Myst patch from Apple and copy the Myst3 OS X US and Bink Carbon Library into the new Myst 3 folder

7. Delete the old Myst III Exile for Mac OSX file, it’s now obsolete

8. From your hard drive, navigate into Library > Application Support > HWPrefs** and click the CPUPalette icon. You’ll need to turn one of your processors off so the sound isn’t choppy. (Remember to turn it on again when you’re through)

** Don’t have the HWPrefs folder? You’ll need to grab your Mac OSX installation disk and click Optional Installs to install XCODE. You might want to make sure you have Rosetta installed while you’re in Optional Installs because you’re going to need that, too.

10. Click/open the Myst3 OSX US file and enjoy your game.

Even after you do all of this, you may still get that m3t error I mentioned earlier. Make sure you’re not launching the game from a shortcut or from Quicksilver. For some reason, you need to directly click the icon in the Myst folder.

You might be thinking to yourself that this seems like a lot of work to get a game running, and you’d be right. It took me hours to find the right accumulation of fixes in order to get the game to operate. Of course, I think it’s totally worth it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get some rest so I can solve more puzzles and save more worlds early in the morning.